HS Comments on the Fly

My daughter and I are reading For the Love of Venice together separately. I got it just for the Venice info, but it has some info on the MOSE project, which is a bonus.

In case you don’t happen to be familiar with the MOSE project (which I wasn’t until we recently saw a Discovery Channel show), it has as its goal the saving of the lagoon that surrounds Venice, Italy, by the strategic placement of barrier walls and floodgates. I think this paper, in .pdf format, probably explains the problem and the proposed solution the best — and with some illustrations.

I’m on page 72 of For the Love of Venice and so far we’ve got

• a main character who is high school boy (a senior) w/younger brother, mom, dad
• a main character who is a U.S. citizen visiting Venice for summer
• a dad who is a civil engineer working on the MOSE project
• a mother who is spacey artist
• a short discussion of subsidence of Venice and floodgates
• a short discussion of pollution of the lagoon
• description of life in Venice
• a girl in ice cream store who is probable romantic interest
• some graffiti and intrigue

So far, I think For the Love of Venice is fairly good. If you’ve got a trip to Venice in your future or you need an interesting novel to help with geography class, your children might enjoy it. It definitely gives the reader a feel for the place, and if you have a guidebook handy, you can look the places up on a map.

Seriously, skip reading Oliver Twist aloud to your kids. And don’t have them read it on their own unless they choose it themselves. So what if it’s a classic.

So what if Dickens is somebody that just *everyone* says you *must* read to be truly educated. So what if it was popular in the 1830s.

Have you read it? If you’re not interested, there’s really no point.

Just because a book (serialized in this case) was extremely popular nearly 200 years ago, doesn’t make it extremely popular today, nor worth your time.

Just because everyone read Dickens in 1900 doesn’t mean that we must read it today!

Don’t bore your children. Don’t waste your time. You are not depriving your children of an excellent education if they never read Oliver Twist.

Okay. Those are harsh words, aren’t they? Yes, a bit. But folks need to know that it’s okay to not read any Dickens. Ever. And the world won’t start wobbling if you “Skip Twist.”

Now, I do think that Oliver Twist is a good story. I read it aloud to my two teens a couple of years ago. If it could be rewritten, basically word for word (not abridged, mind you), then it might be a little easier to not tune it out. Our American language today isn’t quite like the English language of nearly 200 years ago. If modern words could be substituted for some of the archaic words like viands once in a while, the story would be a lot more accessible to the average person. In some cases, a phrase-by-phrase rewrite would be acceptable/necessary.

As I said, Oliver Twist is a good story. Additionally, Dickens is a talented writer. I thoroughly enjoyed his verbal swipes at the English poor laws in the first few chapters of the book. And how could you not just love poor, little Oliver Twist? He’s such a little sweetie. Nancy is a good person and easy to like. You can see that she can be rescued out of her situation and brought back into gentle society. Dickens has a way of making his characters come to life — all of them — sometimes revoltingly so. And the dampness and dirtiness he describes makes me want to burrow deeper into the blankets as I sit on the couch reading. I will not deny that Dickens is talented.

However, his stories are just not something that most folks of 2000+ are entertained by. And really, the first readers of Oliver Twist were reading to be entertained. They weren’t reading it for a school assignment. Folks loved Oliver Twist. Folks devoured each section as it was printed. Because it was so popular, people expected everyone to have read it. As the years went by, this persisted. People who were teens when it first came out, encouraged their children and grandchildren to read it, probably with such words as, “It’s a classic. You’ve got to read it. Everybody who’s anybody has read it.” This has persisted.

So, when someone tells you that your children must read Dickens to be well and truly educated, fleetingly squint your eyes as you remember my comments and then smile, thank them, and ask for more suggestions. But don’t feel bad if “Don’t Do Dickens.”

I think we should all define our own classics. Homeschool families can read books and declare their own classics. We can discern what is classic; we don’t need someone else to tell us what is or isn’t classic. There is no special list of books that one must read to be well read or truly educated.

Here’s our experience with Oliver Twist, in case you’re interested. One student basically enjoyed the book. The other student only enjoyed the parts about Oliver and basically tuned out the Sikes, Nancy, and Fagin parts. I enjoyed it on a certain level. It was good practice for my kids to listen to such a story. The vocabulary is reasonably challenging, and the syntax is challenging, too. Keeping track of all the characters is a small feat. If I had to do it all over again, I think I’d choose something else to read aloud.

One of our own family’s classics is A Long Way from Chicago by Peck. Another is My Family and Other Animals.

Don’t trust those classic reading lists — some titles might be good for your family, but many will not. Find what fits your family and declare your own classics!

More info from the RAQ section.

So, we’re still reading Virginia’s General by Marrin. It’s about General Lee. No, not Bo and Luke Duke’s car, but its namesake. This book was out of print for a while, and the price went a little high — that was when I bought my copy. But now this book is priced reasonably because a homeschool publisher re-published it and a few of Marrin’s other books.

The other day we read about the Union and Confederate soldiers making contact with each other during the war. In this case, it was when they were camped on opposite sides of the Rappahannock River. At these times, pickets (lookouts) would holler at each other for trades. The South could trade their tobacco since they had plenty of it. The North might send over some sugar or coffee, which the South had a difficult time getting its hand on. Little sailboats were used to complete the trades.

Here’s a quote from the book:

[Lee’s] only objection was to a trade in Southern newspapers, which foolishly printed articles about his positions and troop movements. He, like his Northern foes, believed freedom of the press must be limited in time of war. (p.106)

This book is full of interesting little tidbits. Without them, I can find non-fiction history books a little too facty. A little more personal slant on things spices things up — that’s what I like about Marrin’s books. He manages to research and find personal accounts or other source documents that often give us a more realistic view of history, full of little-known tidbits. I wrote a long review of Marrin’s Sea King (Sir Francis Drake) a whopping eight years ago; it describes how Marrin’s writes (but embarrassingly shows my ignorance of a few things).

We gave up on Mila 18. I don’t get it. Twenty years ago I liked it and have fond memories of reading it. But blech. My daughter and I are both just not feeling it.

So we switched to Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving, who named the New York Knicks, btw. (proof, more proof, absolute proof)

Anyway, we’re still in the introduction, regrettably. Let’s hope we move past it soon as I’m getting a bit bogged down and so is the other reader. We’ve gone on to look up Irving in a few American literature textbooks that I store downstairs. They’ve given us a bit of background and told us that he was the first “American author.”

So far, Washington Irving, who actually did visit Andalusia, is traveling from Seville to Granada with a few fellows. He’s meeting people along the way and using a few Spanish words here and there that we’re trying to learn. He also uses a few English words that we’re not familiar with — some we look up if we’ve remembered to fetch a dictionary off a shelf before we get cozy in our respective cozy spots. We drink coffee-laced cocoa and snuggle under blankets, with the fire crackling in the background. We try to stump each other with questions from the text as we read along - it makes us pay attention and is fun for us (and is a sneaky form of review that I started many years ago). We also look up towns along the way in our respective atlases — many of them haven’t changed since … uh-oh … I think it was written in the early 1800s. I’ll check. The introduction states, “In the spring of 1829….”

We’re reading it because we’re supposed to be traveling to see the Alhambra in the next few years, once we’ve saved up something like 500,000 pennies. But that’s not exactly the point. Tales of the Alhambra is reputed to be “literature,” yet I can’t find any online study guide for the book. The Cliffs Notes web site doesn’t have it listed at all. I guess it’s not one of the popular literature books these days — not controversial or popular enough maybe.

I did find it on one homeschooling book list: PNEU. I’m not sure if it’s in The Well-Trained Mind. I just checked; it’s not — only Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. It’s not on the Sonlight list. It could be on other homeschooling lists, but I can’t keep up with all of them.

Here’s one excellent excerpt:

Such were our minor preparations for the journey, but above all we laid in an ample stock of good-humour, and a genuine disposition to be pleased; determining to travel in true contrabandista style; taking things as we found them, rough or smooth, and mingling with all classes and conditions in a kind of vagabond companionship. It is the true way to travel in Spain. With such disposition and determination, what a country is it for a traveller, where the most miserable inn is as full of adventure as an enchanted castle, and every meal is in itself an achievement! Let others repine at the lack of turnpike roads and sumptuous hotels, and all the elaborate comforts of a country cultivated and civilised into tameness and commonplace; but give me the rude mountain scramble; the roving, hap-hazard, wayfaring; the half wild, yet frank and hospitable manners, which impart such a true game-flavour to dear old romantic Spain!

Not just in traveling, but in everyday life, having a genuine disposition to be pleased, is the way to go. The whole excerpt is a great motto to travel (or live) by.